Dissonance between the Internal and External: The Communist Manifesto
An essay I wrote for my final year at university on 'The Communist Manifesto' by Marx & Engels.
The subject was Modernism and Avant Garde (ENGL20022) at the University of Melbourne.
Admittedly, the essay is not all that good but I fear that I might lose it one day so I thought I'd post it here anyway.
The Communist Manifesto is undoubtedly the foremost critique of external socio-political life in the Modern era. However, in decrying the imminent failures of the capitalist regime, Marx and Engels subsume a secondary issue: the incompatibility of individual happiness within a community. Consequently, my essay will focus on the Manifesto as a symptom of the Western Modernism (external life) but simultaneously a reflection of the human condition (internal life). The Manifesto is a symptom of Modernism in that it is a disavowed part of Modernism that is nonetheless a product of it despite denying complicity with it. I will also explore the role of religion in mediating the conflict between the external and internal.
This oxymoronic dilemma, the attempt to find a social system for the masses that preserves the sanctity of the individual, begins with the text's primary criticism of the economic regime being that “capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality” (Marx & Engels, 86). To address this, the authors assert that “the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all” (92). What is clear is that there is no ‘us’ without the individual - the us is an aggregation of the individual. Therefore, any criticism of social structures cannot neglect to consider that their primary concern is the individual. Marx and Engels acknowledge this by asserting that: “man’s consciousness changes with every change in the conditions of his material existence” (90); “the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character” (80). This first quotation solidifies the relationship between the individual and their external life but, ironically, the second quotation crystallises the paradox: how can the work of a group of people lose individual character? This tension that lies between the individual and their milieu is irresolvable and therefore symptomatic of the Modern condition.
The Manifesto is betrayed as a symptom of the political systems which it attempts to criticise because it has not thought through its own conditions and the consequences of its claims. As Burke recognises, the Manifesto depicts a “tension between its desire for a revolutionary act that will transform the world… and the claim that this world is determined by material conditions.” This is the symptomatic nature of Modernity - people must struggle against their own internal nature because it seems to be defined extrinsically. The famous call to action, “WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE” (102) in which the proletariat reader is being educated, addressed and suborned by the text evidences the symptomatic nature of the text. The proletariat readers lack individuality as they are defined by a class assigned to them by old powers; therefore, to reclaim their identity, they are addressed individually but beyond their individuality precisely because they are not individuals. However, if one treats the proletariat as such, in many senses, this is exactly how bourgeoisie have treated them. Therefore, the Manifesto is betrayed by its dogmatic call to action that undermines their primary goal to uplift the proletariat. Despite this symptomatic flaw of modernity, it is also precisely the unification between the internal and external that Marx and Engels seek - whilst you individually must decide, you are not deciding for the individual but for society as a whole.
Moreover, as a genre, the manifesto “seeks to produce the arrival of the modern revolution through an act of self-foundation and self-creation” (Puchner, 2). Unfortunately, this directly parallels “modernism’s self-cannonsing ambitions” (6) in that it makes “conditional promises that [can] be fully honoured only in the future tense; it involve[s] continual deferral and proximal faith” (Lyon, 11). This is evidenced by the assertion that “the proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest…all capital from the bourgeoisie” (Marx & Engels, 91). The lexical choice of “will”, in this quote and throughout the text, reaffirms Lyon’s point as it is a promise that can only be realised in the future tense but is fully assured of its own claim. The irony is that such promises that define manifestos can only ever be realised if the individual readers “unite” (102) and thus cannot be “self-canonised”. It is therefore clear that such statements are a reflexive reaction to an irresolvable internal contradiction; it is symptomatic of Modernity despite the assertion itself being anti-establishment. Hence, the dialectic between the dogmatic and symptomatic (Puchner, 71) reveals and magnifies the dissonance between the intrinsic and extrinsic and thus “represents and produces the fantasies… and shortcomings of modernity” (7).
Finally, the Manifesto can be read as a theological text that wishes to regain the religious eminence of the individual human experience that has been replaced by external society. The authors famously write: “all that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned” (Marx & Engels, 77) utilising imagery and religious allusions to deify the human experience itself and emphasising the sacredness of pre-capitalist life. This is extended when the authors blame money for “drown[ing] the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation” (76). The economic system of capitalism literally destroys the ‘heavenly’ joys of life thus asserting the human experience as theologically true. In other words, capitalism has usurped religion and has instead, “veiled by religious… illusions, substituted… brutal exploitation” (76). In the text, deification of the individual is solidified in the claims, which assert with absolute certainty, the downfall of the bourgeoisie - as if theologically destined. Lyon’s critique of Modernism and the Manifesto for making “conditional promises” and using “proximal faith” can similarly be applied to religion which likewise asserts promises of heaven that can only be realised in the future.
This is given further insight by the anti-religious psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud who “treat[ed] religion as an illusion” (Freud, 3). In response, a friend claimed that he “failed to appreciate the real source of religiosity” which was an “oceanic feeling” (4) - a sense of something “limitless, unbounded” (4). Freud interprets this as “being indissolubly bound up with and belonging to the whole of the world outside oneself” (4) which aligns with Marx and Engel’s depiction of the labourer as both an “appendage of the machine” (Marx & Engels, 80) and enslaved by it. This oceanic feeling can consequently be read as a modernist feeling of alienation born out of ruthless exploitation - the Modern Zeitgeist. Just as the bourgeoisie has “creat[ed] a world after its own image” (78), the oceanic feeling is an image of the Modern condition constructed by the bourgeoisie.
Therefore, as aforementioned, the individual struggles with their identity precisely because it is defined extrinsically, and the religious oceanic feeling is that of helplessness - of being a small cog in a machine. These notions are reiterated in the authors’ assertion that “bourgeois society... is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells” (78). First, this aligns the bourgeoisie with anti-religious beliefs thus reiterating my first assertion that the Manifesto worshiped the individual as holy; second, it demonstrates the authors’ awareness that even those in power are not free from the system's grasp. In a sense, this internal oceanic feeling has been extended beyond the individual and institutionalised externally in the economic systems. Therefore, one must consider the possibility that the bourgeoisie are not conscious perpetrators of an oppressive system but, themselves, a slave to it and thus also feel the same oceanic feeling of hopelessness. Ultimately, this internal oceanic feeling is mirrored in, paralleled by, and projected onto the broader socio-political external world but can also be seen in the opposite manner: it is generated by the individual’s milieu.
This essay utilises religion and symptoms of Modernism to explore whether individual happiness can be guaranteed by external social regimes. The Manifesto exists in the dissonance between internal and external life and continues to provide insight into our individual lives within an expansive world.
Works Cited
Burke, Kenneth. A Grammar of Motives. University of California Press, 1969.
Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and Its Discontents (Penguin Pocket Hardbacks). UK ed., Penguin Books, 2014.
Lyon, Janet. “Manifestoes and Public Spheres: Probing Modernity.” Manifestoes: Provocations of the Modern, 1St Edition, Cornell University Press, 1999, pp. 9–43.
Marx, Karl, et al. “The Communist Manifesto.” The Communist Manifesto (Rethinking the Western Tradition), Yale University Press, 2012, pp. 73–102.
Puchner, Martin. “Marinetti and the Avant-Garde Manifesto.” Poetry of the Revolution: Marx, Manifestos, and the Avant-Gardes, Princeton University Press, 2005, pp. 69–93.
